what to do with abundance

If you are not feeling like a long read, will you at least skip to the bottom and give me your honest vote? Thanks!

I am such the typical Brooklynite today, riding a French vintage bike in a flowy denim dress in the July summer heat with an adventure backpack and no helmet. Wearing a denim dress and a helmet seemed like a decision I would regret in the heat (also I had managed to throw up the perfect little bun that a helmet would destroy). So, I chose danger.

It had to happen, really, because I did a bunch of homebody things this morning like laundry and cleaning and long distance phone calls (okay, fine… a little bunch) before getting out into the sunshine to meet up with some good friends. I like to string things together like twinkle lights… then this and this and this, until the whole day sparkles. Meeting my friends’ baby Eloise Ruby was the first of many twinkles and I guess I’m trying to say that explains the adventure backpack. So many twinkle lights.

So, I am camped out in the hipster-est Fort Greene coffee shop while my bike Betty hangs out in the sunshine, proudly showing off her perfect wire basket and yellow fenders. Eye roll.

A little/a lot of me wants to be at something called the Cass County Fair. You’ve never heard of it, but I promise you wish you had. If I tried to explain the detailed fair schedule, as published in a little handbook by the Cass County Fair Board, it would sound like every stereotype of what makes rural ridiculous to city folks. It is tucked away in a regular county of a very regular flyover state.

But you’ve never been, so you can’t possibly understand what it’s like to walk through the long, white commercial barns to grab bags of free goodies or how it feels to know you have animals in the pig barn or the dairy barn or the beef barn that have your name hanging over their stall. You don’t know the nervous frenzy of waiting to see if your 4-H projects deserved statewide recognition. You don’t “get” the anticipation of the County Queen contest or the talks that happen around campfires or the solidarity of feeding animals at 6 am. This whole rant sounds like crazy, I realize.

You don’t have to understand the irony of my being ultra hipster on a day like today, but that little slice of Midwestern American life is my kind of crazy. I wish (a little bit) that I was eating pancake breakfast at the 4-H food stand with my uncles and cousins or dipping my candy lollipops in my grandma’s ultra creamy coffee like I did when I was seven years old. I know it doesn’t make sense, but it was my kind of crazy for 18 years of life, so it feels appropriate to enjoy some nostalgia as my family lives inside that world this week. I’m living in a different crazy these days, making new memories and living the moments of future nostalgia.

It’s been interesting to answer questions about marriage because it is hard to know where to put all the wonderful. It is surprisingly difficult to figure out how to manage all the abundance and I suppose that is the best way to explain this transition: I am learning to manage a new kind of abundance.

New normals, new abnormals, new routines, new breaks of routines, new escapes, and new dead ends. And really, I haven’t been able to manage any of it. [Also, update on that July heat: full blown rainstorm outside this hipster cafe window.]

It’s like that silly analogy about the way we see the world… the half-empty / half-full glass scenario. We always want it to be full, right? Regardless of our chosen perspective, the assumption is that the best way the glass can be is full. So what happens when a pitcher unleashes abundance over the top of that controversy – when the only perspective from which to see the glass is overflowing. Do we manage the abundance by sopping it up, even though the very thing we wanted has happened and more?

That’s a tricky one. I would say this is a #firstworldproblem but I think it’s everyone’s dilemma if they have every felt abundance. What does the right kind of gratitude look like? How do you know when to jump in puddles and when to hold an umbrella? What is okay to stay a mystery and what should be known?

I know, I ask too many questions.

Maybe that’s why the Cass County Fair feels like a good place to be today. I’ve carved out quite a few geographical escapes over the years (from my own questions) and the Cass County Fair is one of those places. I get to rally around someone else’s success and ambition, chatting on those familiar silver bleachers under some shade (if we’re lucky).

Abundance is worth pondering – worth the questions and the coffee shop afternoons and the confusing blog posts. I am learning, slowly.

Part of the beauty of an overflowing cup is the mystery of always being full but always being filled.

It is really never supposed to make sense or get figured out or be understood. Abundance is like sunshine, maybe. I could spend all day inside with thick books and light refractors and smart instruments and science stuff, but I would never get inside the beauty of sunshine abundance. I would never enjoy the mystery of being full of sunshine while still being filled with it. Sometimes the best explanation of mystery is swirling with outstretched hands and uplifted face under an abundant sunshine sky.

On a completely unrelated note, would you help me do a little research? If I was to write a, ahem, lengthier piece… what would you like to read from me?

Ask your mom, friends, pets what they would want to read from me and then let me know. The rain cleared outside, so I better get Betty home before another downpour results in a wet mess of this unfortunate Brooklyn hipster.

I think you are so cool that what I want to see more of is a personal story, an anecdote. This was superb, I loved it, I loved how you paint pictures with you words, make us ponder and teach us stuff. So yeah, I’m interested in personal stories intertwined with thoughts! Loved this. Fiction would also be cool!